Berimbau wrote:Zeno,
I believe your picture was originally published in Earl Leaf's "Isles of Rhythm" back in 1948. The technology for attaching the cuero is, I think, originally from Central African culture. This African-derived technology is employed more in the French Caribbean than elsewhere in the Diaspora. I think that either leather or vines are used for the drum collar band, and that the application of water and the subsequent drying process tightens that band thereby holding the skin firmly to the barrel resonator. Obviously heat from a fire, a can of sterno, etc, would have to be applied to the head to bring it up to a proper playing pitch.
I think that the survival of this technology in the Diaspora has more to do with tradition than poverty, I think that nails were readily available even to the slave population.
Now were you the guy who used to teach an adjunct drumming course at Sonoma State wherein the students actually made their own tack-head barrel drums? If so, I met a lot of your students back in 1981 when I lived in Cotati.
Saludos,
Berimbau
Berimbau wrote: I knew Courlander as well. He helped me with some of his original research for my now lost article "African-derived drums and drumming in the Southeastern United States." Harold gave me a field drawing of an old peg-tuned drum being used for grain storage by an African-American informant in Alabama. Unfortunately, ALL was lost in Katrina.
But to sum it up, I had uncovered quite a bit of evidence that African-derived drums were being made and played in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and the Carolinas until fairly recently. So much for the drum bans of the antebellum slave code!
Saludos,
Berimbau
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